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To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

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Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

#41
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airplane mode?

Now you're just carrying a brick. What's the point?

I have many apps I can use offline, plus if I need to use my phone it doesn't take long to turn it off airplane mode and have everything reconnect. It's amazing how fast all the notifications come in once you turn off Airplane mode. I don't do that daily, but when I am conscious about battery usage I do. Maybe I just might try doing it more often. I also do it when charging my phone.

Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does absolutely nothing. If you don't want to be tracked, don't carry a phone. It's the only way.

Airplane mode?

If what you're suggesting is that airplane mode prevents you from being tracked, it's not necessarily true; airplane mode leaves certain radios online: http://wonderfulengineering.com/google-tracking-movements-ev...

You can carry a phone inside a Faraday cage, or a phone without those radios. I think this remains consistent with my comment.

Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

#43
post #26

This is an important story, but a little difficult to summarize. Here's my attempt at an overview: 1. Google stores location history data for more of its mobile users than you might expect. The precision is greatest when GPS is on, but less precise data from cell towers and WiFi sources is used almost any time a Google app is being used on an Android or non-Android phone. There have been cases in the past where Googl…

>Google stores location history data for more of its mobile users than you might expect

What do you mean by this?

Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does absolutely nothing. If you don't want to be tracked, don't carry a phone. It's the only way.

I mean, it literally does things.

It does something that's completely useless since you're already being tracked by other means. By the mechanisms of physics, you can't have untrackable wireless communications. It's not how radiation works.

Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

#45
post #2

This seems to me to be a major revelation: police in North Carolina have successfully requested Google account information on all phones near a crime scene. While Google routinely responds to search warrants, this is a much broader type of data request.

Arguably, this leaks everyones data. Anyone who was not in the area will be excluded from the list, therefore letting the police know where I wasn't at the time. I wonder how Google show that on their transparency report? Hopefully "Accounts searched: 1.5 Billion"

While I understand your point, and think it's a valid privacy concern, the reasoning about leaking info on all of Google's users doesn't make sense. If I install a security camera in my room, I'm not leaking information about you if it shows you're not here. There was no expectation of the possibility of that in the first place, so no information is leaked. This is only leaking information about the Google users who are reasonably likely to be within the radius where the query is executed. So perhaps a couple thousand users, (so a legit privacy concern) but not all of them.

Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

#46
post #26

This is an important story, but a little difficult to summarize. Here's my attempt at an overview: 1. Google stores location history data for more of its mobile users than you might expect. The precision is greatest when GPS is on, but less precise data from cell towers and WiFi sources is used almost any time a Google app is being used on an Android or non-Android phone. There have been cases in the past where Googl…

>Google stores location history data for more of its mobile users than you might expect What do you mean by this?

You don't have to be using Maps or an app that obviously uses location for Google to be collecting location related information. I have no idea when they do or don't but I'd bet people would be surprised if they found that the gmail app was relaying their location to Google. On the other hand few wouuld be surprised at all if you told them the maps app was sending their location.

Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

#47
post #2

This seems to me to be a major revelation: police in North Carolina have successfully requested Google account information on all phones near a crime scene. While Google routinely responds to search warrants, this is a much broader type of data request.

Arguably, this leaks everyones data. Anyone who was not in the area will be excluded from the list, therefore letting the police know where I wasn't at the time. I wonder how Google show that on their transparency report? Hopefully "Accounts searched: 1.5 Billion"

> Anyone who was not in the area will be excluded from the list, therefore letting the police know where I wasn't at the time.

No, at best this only shows that your google linked device (presumably a phone) did not have location information for that area at the specific time.

Alternatively it suggests the device could have been switched off/disconnected from the network to hide your presence - making you really a suspect of interest if your name comes into the investigation for some reason.

Dragnet approaches to law enforcement are inherently wrong. They unreasonably cast suspicion on everyone without any good basis and reverse the accepted safeguard that your guilt requires to be proven, and replace it with the idea that you require to prove your innocence.

Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

#48
post #26

This is an important story, but a little difficult to summarize. Here's my attempt at an overview: 1. Google stores location history data for more of its mobile users than you might expect. The precision is greatest when GPS is on, but less precise data from cell towers and WiFi sources is used almost any time a Google app is being used on an Android or non-Android phone. There have been cases in the past where Googl…

Holy shit. So my paranoia about turning off Google location tracking was completely well-founded, and way more quickly than I would have hoped.

GDPR can't come soon enough...

Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

#49
post #26

This is an important story, but a little difficult to summarize. Here's my attempt at an overview: 1. Google stores location history data for more of its mobile users than you might expect. The precision is greatest when GPS is on, but less precise data from cell towers and WiFi sources is used almost any time a Google app is being used on an Android or non-Android phone. There have been cases in the past where Googl…

Holy shit. So my paranoia about turning off Google location tracking was completely well-founded, and way more quickly than I would have hoped. GDPR can't come soon enough...

Now sit back and think about what else people get called paranoid for.

Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

#50

Stop using Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc if you care about privacy!

I noticed you left out Apple - the same company that handed over control of their cloud servers to a Chinese state run company.

I notice you left out Amazon. In fact, there are a number of players to list, which is the reason the grandparent wrote 'etc..'
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